Dark side of being home alone
SHE’S NOT THERE by Tamsin Grey (Borough Press £14.99) JONAH and Raff’s mother Lucy has disappeared in the night. Worried that reporting her absence will mean going to Bad Granny’s, the small boys keep it a secret — from school, from friends, from neighbours.
In the summer heat, their home fills with flies; clothes go unwashed, food and money run out. How long can they last? Will Lucy ever come back? Does anyone in their rackety neighbourhood know where she is?
This amazing debut, packed with South London atmosphere, demonstrates how children love even the most flawed parents.
While sharply contemporary in its social types and tropes, it has To Kill A Mockingbird written all over it. The grown-ups in this novel are stupid; the children, especially Jonah, are the ones with the insight. There’s racial tension, too — and a Boo Radley. Brilliant. THE WILDFLOWERS by Harriet Evans
(Headline Review £7.99) BEN and Cordelia Wilde, privileged children of famous parents, spend summers at the Bosky, their holiday home on the Dorset coast.
But the Bosky has known bad times as well as good, and the horrors of the past seethe just below the glamorous present.
Hideous wartime childhoods, miserable schooldays and betrayals galore cast shadows over the sunny here and now.
Most people in this story have something to hide. Top actor Tony Wilde is rampantly unfaithful, while his wife Alethea’s got skeletons in her designer closet, too.
Then there’s creepy Mads, who befriends the family on the beach and slithers into their midst. It’s a complex tale full of mystery in which families don’t behave like families and man hands misery to man in skip-loads.
The perfect holiday read, in other words!
LETTERS TO IRIS by Elizabeth Noble
(Michael Joseph £12.99) IT’S all happening to Tess. Her adored granny, Iris, is dying just as Tess finds she’s pregnant, but by a man she no longer loves.
Homeless, she moves back in with her practically estranged mother. Then she meets Gigi who’s called time on her 40-year marriage just as her teenage daughter battles school bullies and her son gets engaged to the ice queen from hell.
Both Tess and Gigi are moving into unknown territory; with what result?
Noble specialises in warm-hearted tearjerkers with strong connections between women.
Tess is supported throughout by ballsy Holly, the kind of best friend everyone wants, while generous Gigi’s travails in the land of the 50- plus singleton make amusing reading.
One romance bites the dust after he takes her to the garden centre, which I, for one, can relate to.